Care for Evacuees, Disaster Personnel

Fifteen nursing home residents from Far Rockaway, Queens, have found a temporary respite from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy at Methodist-affiliated Bethel Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. Fifteen separate ambulances transported the residents from the Resort Nursing Home along with 30 disaster response personnel, who were called in from as far away as Michigan, North Carolina and Alabama to help in the evacuation.

The evacuees were placed at Bethel as part of the mandatory evacuation of Zone A, the low-lying areas of New York City. The Resort at 430 Beach 68th Street is not far from the Far Rockaway waterfront where Sandy caused damaging floods and devastation.

Janet Levine, administrator of BNRC, received a call from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) asking if Bethel could accommodate some of the Resort’s residents. “I told them that, of course, we would do whatever was necessary to make room for their evacuees. We wanted to help in any way we could,” she said.

After the ambulances arrived and the residents were settled in, it became apparent that the disaster response personnel were also in need of some attention. They had been working non-stop on evacuations since the initial order by Bloomberg. So Bethel provided the teams with some much-appreciated hot meals and showers.

The Springvale Inn, Bethel’s Assisted Living Senior Residence in Croton, also opened its doors to six residents in the community seeking respite care in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

This is not the first time Bethel has responded to a request from the OEM to provide care and shelter for evacuees. Last year during Hurricane Irene, the Westchester County facility accommodated residents from the Shore View Nursing Home in Brighton Beach, also located in Zone A and subject to a mandatory evacuation.